Ghosts Across Time
by ellfie
Summary: With the powers of the Piece of Eden, ghosts can go both ways.


**A/N:** Just something I considered after reading _Separation Anxiety_ by words without, which is quite haunting. I need to actually get off my ass and work on one story solidly through the end so I can post it – because I have about three others I want to work on/publish. *sigh* Though this is why I like short ones the best. I also hope to follow this one up, but I'm not sure yet.

Uhm. Happy Christmas!

**.x.**

_ With the powers of the Piece of Eden, ghosts can go both ways._

_**Ezio**_

Ezio clutches the Apple as he stalks through the streets. His fingers are curled around its unnaturally warm metal, the grip burning but he can't let go. People look at him and move away. He stalks closer and they move farther still, eyes wide in fear. Is it the Apple? Do they see this seemingly innocent little object and become afraid of something he _knows_ they don't understand? Or do they look at him and balk away from what the artifact is doing to him.

He hadn't meant to use it. Yes, it had come to his mind hundreds of times since learning of its power - what it could do, what _he_ could do with it. But he hadn't wanted to use it like a blade.

And yet, it wasn't a blade, and that was why he had clutched it and thought: _Kill them. They must die._ He hadn't even realized what he was thinking, merely falling back on instinct when the guards rushed at him. But suddenly its hot power flooded through him, and he could feel his mind, _its mind_ reaching out and grasping the poor man's mind. And like a simple tug of a string, a pull of a lever, he yanked it free from the body.

He should have stopped then. He should have steeled himself against his own temptations, backed up by the words of his ancestor before him. This Apple was not made for man, not meant to be held in their hands – in his hands.

But the potential was too great. In his hand is a thing that could change the world, that had been changing it since the beginning. It held so much knowledge, so many questions and answers and more questions than he could have ever thought of on his own. It wasn't bound to the earth, like man, it wasn't bound by time or space. It lived in every moment, never faltering, only living. And he could feel it too. The heat pulsing through his veins, the warm flutter against his mind, the haunting whispers he could never fully understand.

Ezio strides through the empty villa, almost expecting his uncle's booming voice to greet him as he enters the study, faltering only a moment when he is instead greeted with cold silence. He pushes the bookcase open, its mechanisms sticking from disuse. And in a moment he finds himself in front of Altair.

He doesn't know why he is here, only that he needs to be. He needs to stare up at the stone cold assassin and feel impossible warmth. He needs to look under the hood of the Master and remember the history of the Brotherhood, the length and origins of his bloodline.

And then he understands. He is linked. Linked to anything and everything - through his blood and through his mind, through time and through the Apple. Where lesser people are bound to mere moments of life, he – he had the Apple. He no longer lived in the year, in the month, on the day, in the hour, this second, this singular moment. He is more than that. He lives in all moments, reaching across all times, he has no limits. He can feel everything, he can see everything... but he still cannot understand.

His head throbs and he almost drops the Apple, but his fingers are still clutched around it without his own aid. His head pounds and eyes burn, as if suddenly doused in acid. He shut them tightly, and when he opens them he thinks he had gone into his Sight. But no, the colors were almost normal, except for wisps of white and grey filling up the previously bare Sanctuary and he turns to inspect them. Rectangular stacks here and there, desks and chairs and things he new were wires and computers, thought still didn't understand what they were...

And he focuses on the man standing in front of him. He stands only an arm's length away, made of grey and white wisps, like compressed fog. He was staring up at Altair much the same as Ezio himself had been, with the look of a lost man. Ezio suddenly wants to say something, wants to ask why he looks so lost, wants to ask what he's doing in his forgotten home, wants to know who he is...

_Desmond._

Ezio's eyes widened. Was the Apple's whisper true? Was this the man the goddess had spoken of? "Desmond?"

The man jerks, as if being awakened from a dream, and stares right at him. Ezio stares into his eyes, bemused at his bewildered expression. For a moment, they simple study each other, Ezio wondering who this man was, what time he belonged to if he belonged to any at all – maybe he was like himself. Unbound but chained all the same.

And the man reaches out slowly with wide eyes, as if not completely certain he is there, and lifts his fingers as if to touch him. Ezio looks at the movement, watching it curiously with a mix of known calm and inexplicable fear. Then, cautiously – though curious himself – he moves his hand out towards his. He wonders what would happen if they touch... would his hand pass right through as if waving through smoke? Would he meet something solid? Or was this like another moving painting of the gods? _Holograms,_ the word came to him, but he still didn't understand.

He pauses before touching and looks over the man again, brows furrowed. Was this really him? The man he apparently had given his life and the life of others to? The man the gods spoke to instead of he who had stood right in front of them? The man's whose hands held the fate of Ezio's life, the fate of the world? "Desmond?"

And like a ghost of a dream, he was gone.

**.x.**


End file.
